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4.
Wikimania 2012. Foto Helpameout, 2012, cc by-sa.
Iolanda Pensa, iopensa.
I am part of the Wikimedia community. I have been editing Wikipedia as a volunteer since 2006.
Professionally I have been scientiﬁc director of the project WikiAfrica between 2007 and 2012 and I
am now researcher at SUPSI Switzerland. I am currently the lead of Wikimania 2016 Esino Lario, the
Wikipedia world gathering in Italy, in a mountain village over Lake Como.

15.
“The big opportunity with open licenses is far more practical:
it has the potential to dramatically increase the impact, reach
and scale of the ideas we invest in…”
The Shuttleworth Foundation, 2008

21.
The Africa Centre in Cape Town South Africa promoting “WikiAfrica: Increasing the the quality and quantity of African content on Wikipedia”.

22.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Primary_School - April 2014
WIKIPEDIA PRIMARY SCHOOL
Providing on Wikipedia the information necessary to complete the cycle of primary
education in the languages used by the different education systems.
RESEARCH PROBLEM
The research is developed within a Swiss-South African
cooperation lead by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts
of Southern Switzerland (SUPSI) and the University of Cape
Town, in partnership with Wikimedia Switzerland and the Africa
Centre based in Cape Town, and with the support of SNF and
the South African National Research Foundation (NRF).!
Iolanda Pensa (principal investigator Switzerland), Tobias
Schönwetter (principal investigator South Africa), Luca Botturi,
Davide Fornari, Giancarlo Gianocca, Isla Haddow-Flood, Erica
Litrenta, Giovanni Profeta, Kelsey Wiens.
Wikipedia is meant to be an educational tool and it is currently
available online, via mobile phones and ofﬂine. Experiences
have shown that, once accessible, Wikipedia does not provide
information that responds directly to curriculum-based questions.
The project relies on Wikipedia as an existing and growing
resource, it solves the need for an encyclopedia capable of
responding to curriculum-based questions, and it fosters
Wikipedia content, quality and outreach.
THE PROJECT RESEARCH TEAM
The research project developed within a Swiss-South African
cooperation (2014-2017) focuses on the theoretical frame of
Wikipedia Primary School and in developing and evaluating a
system to assess Wikipedia articles for primary education and to
involve a wide network of scholars and contributors in their
production. !
More speciﬁcally the project aims at:!
1. Bridging Wikipedia and primary education. This objective
implies to move the Wikipedia community towards a focus on
primary education, and at the same time to strengthen the
capacity of the education ecosystem to contribute to
Wikipedia, and in general to open collaborative knowledge.
2. Enriching Wikipedia with new content relevant to primary
education. This objective implies an assessment of the
articles produced.
3. Fostering the development of translations and new content in
different Wikipedia linguistic editions. This objective implies
the release of existing educational resources (OER in cc by
or cc by-sa), the production of datasets and the involvement
of the Wikimedia movement.
4. Verifying and evaluating the use of Wikipedia as a source of
information for primary education. This objective implies the
involvement of stakeholders and data analysis.
Wikipedia Primary School contributes to universal primary
education and to the Millennium Development Goals (MDG2:
Achieve Universal Primary Education). Even if it is scalable and
international, the project is conceived primarily to address African
countries and languages.
3

25.
Iolanda Pensa (SUPSI)
The role of scholars in contributing to Wikipedia
The role of scholars in contributing directly or indirectly to Wikipedia is extremely important. Scholars can
write, share and review content related to Africa with a speciﬁc expertise which is not largely available at
present among the Wikipedia community.They can suggest how to improve articles, they can involve students
in writing and translating content as an assignment (which avoids plagiarism from Wikipedia and teaches
students how Wikipedia works), they can produce articles for Wikipedia sessions of scientiﬁc journals and
releasing content under the open license Creative Commons attribution or Creative Commons attribution
share alike. Acknowledging Wikipedia articles as contribution to scientiﬁc journals is an increasing approach
among academic publications; a well structured and complete article is not an original research, but it is more
and more widely recognized as a complex and valuable contribution supporting original research, making it
understandable to hundreds of thousands of readers, and facilitating further studies with relevant references;
articles on scientiﬁc journals (commonly published in a speciﬁc journal session) attribute the article to its
authors whereas the article on Wikipedia attributes the role to the publication and its reviewers (https://
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Scientiﬁc_Journal/References).
This presentation is based on the experience of WikiAfrica (http://www.wikiafrica.net), ShareYour Knowledge
(a project involving 100 institutions in contributing to African content on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia
projects by releasing documentation under open licenses), "Mobile A2K: Culture and Safety in Africa" (with
research documentation such as 4000 images of public art in Douala between 1991 and 2013 made available
on the Wikimedia projects (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Mobile_A2K), of 4 years of
teaching experience and Wikipedia assignments at NABA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/
NABA) and on the research project Wikipedia Primary School (https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Research:Wikipedia_Primary_School_SSAJRP_programme).

39.
Permissions - Wikimedia Commons <permissions-commons@wikimedia.org>
I hereby assert that I am the creator and/or sole owner of the exclusive
copyright of WORK [ insert link ].
I agree to publish that work under the free license Creative Commons
attribution share-alike 3.0.
I acknowledge that I grant anyone the right to use the work in a commercial
product, and to modify it according to their needs.
I am aware that I always retain copyright of my work, and retain the right to be
attributed in accordance with the license chosen. Modiﬁcations others make to
the work will not be attributed to me.
I am aware that the free license only concerns copyright, and I reserve the
option to take action against anyone who uses this work in a libelous way, or in
violation of personality rights, trademark restrictions, etc.
I acknowledge that I cannot withdraw this agreement, and that the work may or
may not be kept permanently on a Wikimedia project.
DATE, NAME OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER

40.
The license Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. DensityDesign Research Lab-INDACO Department Politecnico di Milano, ShareYour Knowledge, 2011-2012, cc by-sa.
People and institutions do not need to become
Wikipedias to contribute.

45.
“The big opportunity with open licenses is far more practical:
it has the potential to dramatically increase the impact, reach
and scale of the ideas we invest in…”
The Shuttleworth Foundation, 2008